The Impact Factor

The Upside Down: The Feeling Of An Empty Plate

Perspectives

Traveling to the Upside Down is something I typically like to avoid. It’s cold there, dark. Unsettling. Spores float in a pitch-black sky, wood creaks like an explosion in its silent canvas. It is a scary place, sure, but the most terrifying thing is the listlessness. The timelessness. I’m in a void with no direction and I only want to get out. A new game is my ticket to escape.

The Upside Down is the place I’m transported when I’ve got nothing on the docket, no game I am working towards completing. Games are huge part of my day-to-day life. They fall into a pair of categories. Lifestyle games fill in short moments or during travel. They don’t stave off being pulled into the Upside Down. The second are my sit-down experiences, console and PC games that I play from start to finish. AAA or indie, these are the games that load up my gaming plate. These are the titles that keep my tethered to this side of the board. They keep me in the light.

Beware the Upside Down. 

I’m a task oriented person and have been for as long as I can remember. My preferred form of organization is a bulleted list, and I’m a several sticky note a day scientist. Try as I might to ingest video games at a leisurely pace or without a goal in mind, I always fall victim to my habits. A new sit-down game always, always becomes a box that needs to be checked off. Or more often, a series of boxes that cry out to be x’d in. While consuming, my inclination towards tasks doesn’t hinder my enjoyment of the sum experience of a game – I’m able to lose my self in the world, gameplay or story. Where the problem lies is in the space between games. The Upside Down.

Stranger Things, aside from being the year’s best show, has finally offered a graphical depiction of how I feel when not ‘working’ on a sit-down game. Because you see, not having a game on my plate makes the world around me change. It’s my world, the one I typically live in, but darker and more listless. There is a permeating sense of “off.” It’s not malicious. The closest I can compare it to is when you’re sleepy and put creamer in your cereal instead of milk, or getting winded 10 minutes into a 30-minute run. Like the Upside Down in Stranger Things, my in-between space imperfectly mirrors my normal day to day just enough to be unsettling. The danger isn’t being there, it’s being there too long.

It's like my world, but off. Dark, quiet, listless.

It is a feeling I like to avoid, for obvious reasons. The Upside Down isn’t the most pleasant place. But I found myself exploring its dark woods a couple weeks ago after I completed Severed on the PS Vita. My “now playing” section of my living games document went blank. The games remaining in my backlog were all a couple years overripe – still worth playing, but not anything that called out to me. Being on a graduate student budget doesn’t always allow for me to stay on top of all the new releases either. But as the days began to add up, I felt myself slipping deeper into the Upside Down. Ranked games of Overwatch here, legend ladder in Clash Royale there, nothing could stop the quiet from becoming louder and louder. So I reached out.

I texted a good friend about a game I had been indecisive about, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. It was a title I knew I would like to play at some point as I enjoyed the prequel, Human Revolution, but whether to get it while it was ‘new’ was another question entirely. I heard the Demogorgon coming, though, so I had to act. His glowing review for Mankind Divided sured up my decision and parted the cold vines in the Upside Down, revealing my way out. I had something to put on my plate. I defeated the Demogorgon. I jumped into Mankind Divided and haven’t looked back.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is no paradise, but I'll take it if it
means escaping the Upside Down.

Usually as I get towards the end of a game I can see portals to the Upside Down begin to open. That’s why I take it upon myself to always have a game or two, or three, lined up as next. Because having an empty plate is like a dinner bell to the Demogoron and no array of Christmas lights are going to be there to warn me of danger.

Uh oh. Time to find a new game. Fast.

I’m out of the Upside Down and relieved to be back in the light. I already have three games lined up after Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – Psychonauts, Darkest Dungeon, and Inside. My escapes from the Upside Down feature a dystopian near future, a macabre adventure of psychological horror, and the struggle of a young boy against totalitarian forces. Bleak, but I’ll take it. I don’t plan on returning to the Upside Down anytime soon. I intend to keep myself quite occupied.